In today's stock market where quantitative trading is all the rage, most people believe that these cold algorithmic robots are Wall Street's ruthless reapers, constantly extracting retail investors' hard-earned money at millisecond speeds due to emotional misjudgments or asymmetric information.

However, in the past 48 hours, in an emerging market, multiple top quantitative robots collectively experienced a near-perfect profit curve breakdown, while a mysterious account named a4385 raked in $280,000 from it.

This market is called a prediction market, and a trader named a4385 here has showcased to the world a meticulously planned hunt targeting quantitative robots.

The Financial Version of "Guess the Number": Arbitrage Paradise of Quantitative Models

Everyone understands "guess the number," and there is a similar gameplay in the prediction market.

For example, if you bet on "gold price will rise or fall tomorrow" by choosing "rise," and the price indeed rises tomorrow, then regardless of the magnitude of the increase, your "rise" position will be settled with a profit based on the odds at the time of betting, with the odds themselves corresponding to the probability of the event occurring. Conversely, if the price falls, no matter how much, your position will be zeroed out.

"XRP will rise or fall in the next 15 minutes" is a typical representation of many markets in the prediction market. Each 15-minute market opens with an initial price; if the price of XRP is higher than the initial price after 15 minutes, traders betting on "rise" profit, whereas those betting on "fall" profit if the price is lower.

As shown, Price To Beat corresponds to the initial price, Current Price corresponds to the real-time price. The red "12:29" in the top right corner indicates the time remaining until settlement. If the price line is above the "target" in the chart at settlement, those betting on "rise" profit; otherwise, those betting on "fall" profit.

This real-time mechanism has made this market a paradise for quantitative robots: algorithms capture pricing deviations caused by retail investors due to emotions, information delays, remaining time, and other reasons through precise statistical models, and perfectly erode stable profits through automated trading.

0x8dxd is a perfect example among many quantitative robots: since its launch on December 5, 2025, it has accumulated $740,000 in profits over the past 44 days, participating in an average of 219 different markets per day, with a very smooth profit curve.

XRP Spikes Just in Time for Settlement, “Lucky Whale” Doubles Funds

On the afternoon of January 17, 2026, a4385 bet “upward” in the “XRP 15 Minutes Later” bet.

The initial price of XRP for this bet was $2.0784, and until 17:58:54 (with 66 seconds remaining until settlement), XRP's price was still lingering at $2.0737, with the corresponding upward probability only at 36%—the market consensus was that XRP would unlikely rise above the initial price in the remaining 1 minute.

However, in the next minute, XRP suddenly began a continuous upward surge and settled in the market at $2.0817—just crossing the initial price.

This meant that a4385 achieved a huge profit from entry to settlement, while those like the quant bots in the image below spat out all historical profits just for this single market, even enduring additional losses.

This quant bot had made over $40,000 in profits over the past 7 months but incurred a $34,000 loss in this particular bet.

The Carefully Orchestrated Luck Behind Repeated Strokes of Fortune

After the settlement of this bet, it was discovered that a4385 subsequently replicated several similar “lucky whale” operations: minutes before settlement in multiple markets, XRP's price would suddenly spike, only to rapidly fall back the next second after settlement.

This made people start suspecting that his “luck” might not be a coincidence but rather a precise snipe at the quant bots.

In theory, a4385 could bet “upward” when the real-time XRP price was below the initial price, then in the minute before settlement, buy XRP with a large market order, artificially driving up the price to ensure that the settlement price was higher than the initial price, thus locking in profits.

At this point, all the seemingly insignificant details started to become important: the 17th was a weekend, indicating that the order book depth provided by market makers for XRP was insufficient to cushion large transactions in a short period.

Choosing XRP as the target, different from Bitcoin, further ensured a shallower order book depth, allowing the operator to manipulate the price at a lower cost in a short time.

This gave a4385 a perfect opportunity for a brief manipulation:

Firstly, in the prediction market, make multiple large "Long" bets in the last 10 minutes before settlement. Since the real-time price during this period is consistently lower than the starting price, the odds for these bets are higher.

On the corresponding XRP price chart, the price remained around 2.074 until just before 17:59. In the last minute, several abnormally large trades flooded in, causing the price to instantly spike above the starting price (red horizontal line).

After the settlement of this market, immediately dump the recently bought XRP, causing a sudden price drop.

If we assume that all the market buy orders at 17:59 were from a4385, then based on the $569,000 trading volume in that minute and considering a 0.32% exchange fee, the total cost of their buys and sells is approximately $6,200.

The profit from their "Long" bet in this market is $40,218. By replicating this strategy continuously, they have made nearly $300,000 in the last 48 hours.

While marveling at a4385's seemingly money-printing-like operation, we also need to consider the cost behind this apparent "retail trader's revenge" saga.

In addition to bearing thousands of dollars in fee erosion from buying into the pump, there is also a massive loss incurred when selling after the settlement due to the coin's price drop.

Therefore, alongside the pump, they need to hold an equivalent 1x short position. Only in this way, regardless of how intensely the spot XRP price fluctuates, can the total value of their assets remain unchanged.

This means that besides bearing the fee erosion, they also need over a million dollars in liquid capital to ensure the viability of this strategy.

So, this is not a gambler's game of luck, nor is it a retail investor's carnival.

Behind the legendary story of a casino windfall, perhaps the one who laughs last is not luck itself, but the inevitable result of precise calculation of capital, structure, and rules.

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